This invention relates in general to texturing brooms and apparatus for surface texturing freshly laid uncured concrete or other like pavement such as used for roadways, for example.
In the formation of concrete and similar type roadway pavements, it is customary and generally governmentally required practice to texture the surface of the freshly laid uncured concrete pavement by drawing a stiff texturing broom thereacross to form shallow surface grooves in the pavement transverse to the intended normal direction of traffic thereon mainly for the purpose of providing an anti-skid pavement surface.
Pavement texturing machines are commonly employed for such purpose and comprise an endless conveyor belt which extends horizontally above and across the pavement surface and carries one or more texturing brooms provided with tines which are depressed into and form grooves in the pavement surface as the broom is drawn thereacross by the conveyor belt.
The texturing brooms conventionally employed heretofore on such pavement texturing machines have comprised an elongated base or header board member generally formed of two planed wood board sections secured flatwise together, as by means of fastening screws, with a row of straight, comparatively flexible spring steel tines clamped therebetween and projecting equidistantly from the longitudinal seam between the two board members in spaced apart parallel relation in a direction more or less normal to the longitudinal edge of the joined board members and disposed approximately in a common plane. The brooms have been supported on the pavement texturing machines with their tines extending at a steep and almost perpendicular angle to the pavement surface during their traverse thereacross by the conveyor belt. As a result, the straight flexible tines of the broom become severely deflected to a sharply curved shape during use owing to the force of the viscous concrete pavement initially pressing almost perpendicularly against the broom tines at the outset of each broom traverse of the pavement surface. This severe deflection of the comparatively flexible tines subjects them to a ripping effect which in some cases rips the tines completely out of and separates them from the header board. Moreover, besides there not being any effective means of applying downward pressure on the deflected flexible spring steel tines in order to obtain the required depth of the grooves needed to produce the anti-skid surface on the concrete pavement, the above-mentioned severe deflection of the tines also acts to permanently bend or distort many of the tines out of their original straight shape and parallel relation whereby they then become ineffective to perform proper texturing of the pavement due to the distorted tines either failing to contact the pavement at all or to form grooves of improper depth or spacing in the pavement. For the above reasons, therefore, the texturing brooms as employed on the prior art pavement texturing machines have had comparatively short service life and have required either frequency replacement or repair.